The year kicks off with a bang as I will be attempting the WDW
Marathon. This will be my third marathon. I am significantly untrained
and unprepared for the distance. I barely did a half today and I was
struggling at the end. There will be lots of walking. The primary goal
of signing up has been realized, I'm back to double digit training
runs, but I will consider the entire thing a failure if I don't finish
the race.
Regardless of whether or not I will have a new runDisney medal after
the marathon, I plan on using the momentum of my training effort to
keep up the double digit runs. I'm going to revive the run 1000 miles
goal. Reaching this distance will require an average of 20 miles a
week. Two 5 mile runs during the week and a weekend 10 miler will get
me there. I've been doing this for my marathon training so this is
realistic. The challenge will be getting in the long run on weekends
that I'm not in Florida. Or I could just bump up the distance on other
weeks to cover the lost miles. We'll see. I just want to maintain a
consistent cadence of long runs. I'm not planning for any races. If
something fits into the family schedule, so be it, but races will not
be a priority.
I will keep lifting. I want to be more intentional about doing lower
body and core exercises. I've been doing the lifts I enjoy just to
keep me moving and to get the emotional benefits of lifting. The
Crossfit workouts have exposed the weakness of my lower body. Getting
my legs and core stronger will benefit me now and well into the
future. Air squats and occasional lunges will get me going down that
path. I will add in more as it makes sense over the course of the
year. I will be adding in my daily ab work as well. That fell off a
cliff once COViD started. TIme to get it going again.
The danger of the Book Shelf Zero project is that I feel like a
failure if my to be read pile doesn't get smaller every year. I still
feel it's a worthy goal, but I need to figure out a way to cleanse it
of the negative energy that is growing around it. I bought a bunch of
books at the end of the year. My total is up to 169. I'm close to
finishing a Drizzt book so it will be down to 168 in the next day or
two. I've already decided to set prioritize reading for at least 30
minutes every evening. The trick of getting this habit to stick will
be selecting pleasant to read books for the first couple of months. I
need to find the books in my library that fits this specification and
stick to those, but still celebrate every book that I read. My book
list projects are nice in that they are static. The lists don't get
longer. I read books from each list this year. I own many books from
all three of them so I will de facto make progress on them if I am
reading books I own.
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Year in Review - 2021
A year like no other. So much has happened. Tiffany said that I am
giving her a new life for Christmas. That's not hyperbole. Where
things stand in December of 2021 were nowhere in evidence in January
2021.
I'm slowly accommodating myself to the shape and feel of this new
life. Accepting the new has been easy. Letting go of the old has been
the real issue. For all my hesitancy and doubt, I knew that second
guessing my decision would be part of this process. Second guessing
isn't constructive or helpful, but it's also very difficult to build a
new life while wondering how things may have turned out if the other
choice had been made. The shadow of my old life fades with each day.
Looking ahead instead of constantly peeking at what lays behind me was
a big 2021 accomplishment.
Acknowledging that my life was about much more than checking arbitrary
goals from a list this year is where a review like this has to start.
What I set out to do at the beginning of the year was cast aside to
pursue a new job in a new state in a totally new living situation.
That became the focus. Running, reading, and getting healthier
remained important parts of my life. They just didn't look quite how I
thought they would when I took this look back at the end of the year.
Running:
I started the year recovering from a mystery knee ailment. I have no
idea why my knee started clicking and slipping last October. The
injury (if that's even the right word) worked itself out by the end of
January, but my running volume didn't get back to pre-injury volume
until I moved. I'm a few weeks from a marathon. I'm seriously
undertrained, but I'm trained enough that I can start the race pretty
confident that I can cover the entire distance. This is no small feat
given where I was as late as June. My runs were only a few miles. I
can look back and say that I was doing the absolute minimum for
running from late January, when my injury was behind me, up until I
started increasing my mileage once I was in Clearwater. I wasn't just
unmotivated, I was depressed. I was miserable in my job, mired in
remorse for work mistakes made over a year ago, and fed up with the
performative COVID restrictions (which included my kids remote
schooling at home). I was squeezing runs in right up until I had to
start work. I didn't give myself time for anything longer than a few
miles.
Overcoming that depression is the true accomplishment of 2021. A Kanye
song came on as I was writing that last paragraph. Listening to that
song and every other track from Yeezus was a big part of my spring
runs. I remember how I felt on those runs while listening to that
song. My self-doubt was intense. I was overwhelmed and stressed.
Emerging from that negative space is a big part of my sense that this
choice was right. I would have descended deeper into that hole had I
stayed my previous course. My fitness is still not where I would like
it, but I'm not spending runs trying to talk myself into finishing the
run.
I wisely avoided setting any running goals at the beginning of the
year. I wasn't sure how long it would take to recover from the knee
thing so I didn't know what was realistic. No sense planning for a
race either as there was no indication of when in-person races would
come back. This year was definitely a drop compared to previous years.
As of now, December 22, my total mileage for the year stands at 580
miles. I expect that I will be a bit over 600 miles by the end of the
year. This is my lowest total since 2016, which was also an injury
plagued year. My mileage total would be much lower if I had not
registered for the Disney Marathon. My primary motivation for signing
up for the race was to get me to increase the distance of my training
runs. I wanted to get back to where I could do a 10K or 10 miles
regularly. I'm back to that point. I guess I can say the marathon was
a success no matter how I do at the actual event as I have
successfully increased my training run distance. I would not have
increased the distance without the marathon. Running in Florida is not
the most pleasant experience. I would have skipped runs or cut them
short if I was just running rather than getting prepared for a
marathon.
I did expect to have more time to run once I was living down here by
myself. I thought I would be bored and looking for things to keep me
busy on the weekends, but that has not been the case. There have been
15 weekends since I started working at my new company. I have been
back in Virginia for 3 of those weekends. I'm not going to take two
hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning to run while I'm at home. We
were in Disney World for another weekend. That leaves 11 weekends open
for long runs in the Florida sun. I was moving one of those weekends.
I ran, but it was a short run. So I really only had 10 weekends for a
run of more than 10 miles. The number is really smaller than that when
you consider I needed a month or so to build back up to that distance.
So I really have 7 or 8 chances for a long run. My first weekend to
kick things up past 7 miles fell on one of my trips home. I did 8.5
miles the week after that (this was October 16). I broke 10 miles for
the first time in a very long time on October 23. I moved the
following Saturday. Instead of getting up to 11 or 12 miles, I ran
6.26 miles. I weaved all over my new neighborhood to get 13 miles the
first weekend in November. I took a break around mile 8 to get some
water and eat a snack. I took my car to get an oil change the Saturday
after that. I had a less than stellar run on Sunday. I got to 10 miles
and called it a day. We're up to November 20 now. I had a good 15 mile
run on the Pinellas Trail. I maintained a consistent pace and felt
good for the majority of the run. I should have taken more nutrition
at my last water stop, but I was pleased with the effort. I was 3 days
into a trip to Disney World with the family the following weekend.
Some people may be able to do 10 mile runs on property. I can't. I
flew back to Virginia the following Friday. No long runs over the
weekend. I decided that I could get in a long run on Monday, December
6. I did. I ran 13 miles, but it was broken into two runs with an hour
or so between them. I was still home the next Saturday, we're in early
December at this point, so I just did another shorter run. Last
Saturday, December 18, was my only Saturday at the Florida house in
all of December. The marathon is getting close, time to get in a
quality long run. I did a long run, 13.25 miles on the road with
another three quarters of a mile on a gym treadmill. The run was a
struggle. It was hot and I just was not feeling good. It was a bit
dispiriting to struggle at such a relatively short distance so close
to the marathon.
So what's my takeaway from this tedious review of my weekend runs? I
think I did the best I could with the time I had. The first trip home
came right as I was really building good momentum. That slowed me down
a step. The move was another derailer. I had to get out of my
apartment in one weekend. I was exhausted by the time I had everything
in the house. It sounds minor, but losing my running routes at the
apartment was something I had to overcome. I was just settling into
the area when I had to establish new routes. I still miss easy access
to the trails for the long weekend runs. I had that great 15 mile run,
and then I had a stretch of weekends where family came first. The
Disney trip was followed by two weekends at home. That was prime
training time that I readily sacrificed to family needs. There is a
pattern where I have a good long run and then I hit a derailer. I have
no idea how this fragmented training will show up in the actual
marathon. It will be my slowest one so far. Not that it matters. The
primary goal was realized. I just need to make sure I don't regress
and go back to 3 or 4 mile runs on Saturday mornings.
Reading:
I started the year with a few clear reading objectives. I accomplished
one of them by reading the very mediocre Riftwar Saga. My unrealized
goals boil down to me buying too many books and spending time doing
things other than reading. Starting a new job and moving to Florida
were also pretty hard to overlook factors. I set my reading goals
before I knew I would be moving, but I thought reading would be one of
my main activities after I moved. Wrong. I forgot that I actually have
to live while I'm here. My days weren't as empty as I had anticipated.
Shopping, cleaning, and all the other small tasks of living add up.
There would still be plenty of time to read if I made the effort. I've
been paying more attention to how I'm actually spending my time. I
don't ever prioritize reading. I did a small experiment where I set 30
minutes each night for reading. It made a difference. I always enjoy
reading (assuming the book is good) once I get started. It's just the
getting going that can be a challenge. Reading is always something I
will get to eventually. If I'm serious about wanting to read all these
books, I have to make reading a priority. I have plenty of time to set
aside for reading. I just spend time doing other things instead.
Lifting and other fitness goals:
This was the best year for lifting I've had in a long time. The amount
of weight I'm lifting always seems to plateau right around 270 for the
bench, but I was at that point for a pretty big chunk of the year.
Going to the gym is one of the things that gets prioritized over
reading. It's a big part of my life. I feel better when I lift.
The rower isn't with me and I don't have the time or motivation to use
the rowers at the gym. I need to row. It's the best way that I have to
get lower body work (at least right now). We'll see how it fits back
into my routine once it's back with me later in 2022.
My weight has floated between 220 and 230 all year. That's how it's
been for years. I enjoy eating too much. Will that change soon? Maybe,
but the odds are not good.
I could go on and discuss professional things, but this is already
long enough. The professional stuff is so extensive that it could be a
whole series of posts. Maybe later. Maybe never. Maybe I'll just read
instead.
giving her a new life for Christmas. That's not hyperbole. Where
things stand in December of 2021 were nowhere in evidence in January
2021.
I'm slowly accommodating myself to the shape and feel of this new
life. Accepting the new has been easy. Letting go of the old has been
the real issue. For all my hesitancy and doubt, I knew that second
guessing my decision would be part of this process. Second guessing
isn't constructive or helpful, but it's also very difficult to build a
new life while wondering how things may have turned out if the other
choice had been made. The shadow of my old life fades with each day.
Looking ahead instead of constantly peeking at what lays behind me was
a big 2021 accomplishment.
Acknowledging that my life was about much more than checking arbitrary
goals from a list this year is where a review like this has to start.
What I set out to do at the beginning of the year was cast aside to
pursue a new job in a new state in a totally new living situation.
That became the focus. Running, reading, and getting healthier
remained important parts of my life. They just didn't look quite how I
thought they would when I took this look back at the end of the year.
Running:
I started the year recovering from a mystery knee ailment. I have no
idea why my knee started clicking and slipping last October. The
injury (if that's even the right word) worked itself out by the end of
January, but my running volume didn't get back to pre-injury volume
until I moved. I'm a few weeks from a marathon. I'm seriously
undertrained, but I'm trained enough that I can start the race pretty
confident that I can cover the entire distance. This is no small feat
given where I was as late as June. My runs were only a few miles. I
can look back and say that I was doing the absolute minimum for
running from late January, when my injury was behind me, up until I
started increasing my mileage once I was in Clearwater. I wasn't just
unmotivated, I was depressed. I was miserable in my job, mired in
remorse for work mistakes made over a year ago, and fed up with the
performative COVID restrictions (which included my kids remote
schooling at home). I was squeezing runs in right up until I had to
start work. I didn't give myself time for anything longer than a few
miles.
Overcoming that depression is the true accomplishment of 2021. A Kanye
song came on as I was writing that last paragraph. Listening to that
song and every other track from Yeezus was a big part of my spring
runs. I remember how I felt on those runs while listening to that
song. My self-doubt was intense. I was overwhelmed and stressed.
Emerging from that negative space is a big part of my sense that this
choice was right. I would have descended deeper into that hole had I
stayed my previous course. My fitness is still not where I would like
it, but I'm not spending runs trying to talk myself into finishing the
run.
I wisely avoided setting any running goals at the beginning of the
year. I wasn't sure how long it would take to recover from the knee
thing so I didn't know what was realistic. No sense planning for a
race either as there was no indication of when in-person races would
come back. This year was definitely a drop compared to previous years.
As of now, December 22, my total mileage for the year stands at 580
miles. I expect that I will be a bit over 600 miles by the end of the
year. This is my lowest total since 2016, which was also an injury
plagued year. My mileage total would be much lower if I had not
registered for the Disney Marathon. My primary motivation for signing
up for the race was to get me to increase the distance of my training
runs. I wanted to get back to where I could do a 10K or 10 miles
regularly. I'm back to that point. I guess I can say the marathon was
a success no matter how I do at the actual event as I have
successfully increased my training run distance. I would not have
increased the distance without the marathon. Running in Florida is not
the most pleasant experience. I would have skipped runs or cut them
short if I was just running rather than getting prepared for a
marathon.
I did expect to have more time to run once I was living down here by
myself. I thought I would be bored and looking for things to keep me
busy on the weekends, but that has not been the case. There have been
15 weekends since I started working at my new company. I have been
back in Virginia for 3 of those weekends. I'm not going to take two
hours on a Saturday or Sunday morning to run while I'm at home. We
were in Disney World for another weekend. That leaves 11 weekends open
for long runs in the Florida sun. I was moving one of those weekends.
I ran, but it was a short run. So I really only had 10 weekends for a
run of more than 10 miles. The number is really smaller than that when
you consider I needed a month or so to build back up to that distance.
So I really have 7 or 8 chances for a long run. My first weekend to
kick things up past 7 miles fell on one of my trips home. I did 8.5
miles the week after that (this was October 16). I broke 10 miles for
the first time in a very long time on October 23. I moved the
following Saturday. Instead of getting up to 11 or 12 miles, I ran
6.26 miles. I weaved all over my new neighborhood to get 13 miles the
first weekend in November. I took a break around mile 8 to get some
water and eat a snack. I took my car to get an oil change the Saturday
after that. I had a less than stellar run on Sunday. I got to 10 miles
and called it a day. We're up to November 20 now. I had a good 15 mile
run on the Pinellas Trail. I maintained a consistent pace and felt
good for the majority of the run. I should have taken more nutrition
at my last water stop, but I was pleased with the effort. I was 3 days
into a trip to Disney World with the family the following weekend.
Some people may be able to do 10 mile runs on property. I can't. I
flew back to Virginia the following Friday. No long runs over the
weekend. I decided that I could get in a long run on Monday, December
6. I did. I ran 13 miles, but it was broken into two runs with an hour
or so between them. I was still home the next Saturday, we're in early
December at this point, so I just did another shorter run. Last
Saturday, December 18, was my only Saturday at the Florida house in
all of December. The marathon is getting close, time to get in a
quality long run. I did a long run, 13.25 miles on the road with
another three quarters of a mile on a gym treadmill. The run was a
struggle. It was hot and I just was not feeling good. It was a bit
dispiriting to struggle at such a relatively short distance so close
to the marathon.
So what's my takeaway from this tedious review of my weekend runs? I
think I did the best I could with the time I had. The first trip home
came right as I was really building good momentum. That slowed me down
a step. The move was another derailer. I had to get out of my
apartment in one weekend. I was exhausted by the time I had everything
in the house. It sounds minor, but losing my running routes at the
apartment was something I had to overcome. I was just settling into
the area when I had to establish new routes. I still miss easy access
to the trails for the long weekend runs. I had that great 15 mile run,
and then I had a stretch of weekends where family came first. The
Disney trip was followed by two weekends at home. That was prime
training time that I readily sacrificed to family needs. There is a
pattern where I have a good long run and then I hit a derailer. I have
no idea how this fragmented training will show up in the actual
marathon. It will be my slowest one so far. Not that it matters. The
primary goal was realized. I just need to make sure I don't regress
and go back to 3 or 4 mile runs on Saturday mornings.
Reading:
I started the year with a few clear reading objectives. I accomplished
one of them by reading the very mediocre Riftwar Saga. My unrealized
goals boil down to me buying too many books and spending time doing
things other than reading. Starting a new job and moving to Florida
were also pretty hard to overlook factors. I set my reading goals
before I knew I would be moving, but I thought reading would be one of
my main activities after I moved. Wrong. I forgot that I actually have
to live while I'm here. My days weren't as empty as I had anticipated.
Shopping, cleaning, and all the other small tasks of living add up.
There would still be plenty of time to read if I made the effort. I've
been paying more attention to how I'm actually spending my time. I
don't ever prioritize reading. I did a small experiment where I set 30
minutes each night for reading. It made a difference. I always enjoy
reading (assuming the book is good) once I get started. It's just the
getting going that can be a challenge. Reading is always something I
will get to eventually. If I'm serious about wanting to read all these
books, I have to make reading a priority. I have plenty of time to set
aside for reading. I just spend time doing other things instead.
Lifting and other fitness goals:
This was the best year for lifting I've had in a long time. The amount
of weight I'm lifting always seems to plateau right around 270 for the
bench, but I was at that point for a pretty big chunk of the year.
Going to the gym is one of the things that gets prioritized over
reading. It's a big part of my life. I feel better when I lift.
The rower isn't with me and I don't have the time or motivation to use
the rowers at the gym. I need to row. It's the best way that I have to
get lower body work (at least right now). We'll see how it fits back
into my routine once it's back with me later in 2022.
My weight has floated between 220 and 230 all year. That's how it's
been for years. I enjoy eating too much. Will that change soon? Maybe,
but the odds are not good.
I could go on and discuss professional things, but this is already
long enough. The professional stuff is so extensive that it could be a
whole series of posts. Maybe later. Maybe never. Maybe I'll just read
instead.
Monday, December 13, 2021
Rearview Mirror
When do we move beyond the past and live our life in the future? Let's
be honest, that should be when do I move beyond the past and start
living my life pointing toward the future rather than gazing into my
past. I was lying in bed this morning, my alarm having gone off, when
I felt a familiar clenching in my gut. My new friend anxiety coming to
pay a visit. Anxiety can't just come and hang out for no reason. There
must be something that I am dealing with in my life that is making me
anxious. I don't remember what issue I started to fixate on, but I
stopped and asked myself if the thoughts were causing the feelings of
anxiety or was the physical sensation that I have come to link with
anxiety making me find something to feel anxious about? I never really
had the physical sensations that I was experiencing before the bad
January of 2020, when I took a large load of work stress with me on a
trip to Disney World. I spent the entire trip in knots about a couple
of decisions that I had made. They were risky decisions that were not
panning out and I worked for a company that worked hard to protect
itself from risky decisions. The situations were resolved and my
reputation with some people was damaged. I thought that was a big deal
and those few weeks hounded me for months. They still do. The decay of
that impact is asymptotically slow. It lingers. It's why I had that
clenching in my guts this morning.
If emotions are just the labels we put on physical sensations, that
incident back in 2020 taught my system to treat a certain kind of
feeling as the anxiety that comes from regret about past actions and
the fear of what those actions may have on my future. I need to
reprogram that sensation and teach myself a new way to interpret those
sensations when they emerge. It's like my body got in the habit of
feeling that way for a few months and finds every opportunity to
recreate that experience. Disney World has been linked to that
episode. The complete release from reality that I used to experience
while on property has been replaced by this bracing for something bad.
Sitting on the porch at Riviera taking a call about what was going on
at PDI remains a vivid memory. It's like a part of me wants to go back
to that moment. I'm not in that moment, but I continue to experience
the fear and helplessness that I lived with during that entire trip
every time I step back on property. I will continue to relive that
bleak time until I fully confront that issue and put that period
behind me.
That's a very poignant and sharp instance of where a moment in the
past provides the lens through which to experience my present. That's
not the only one, even if it is the one that I dwell on the most. My
obsessive record keeping started as a way to track my progress. It
looked very future directed to me when I started, but the practice
roots me deeper into my past. I'm in a constant struggle with the
previous me. I'm not battling with my fear of The Edge or finding ways
to propel myself to new levels of performance or achievement. I'm
training for my next marathon in the context of my training for my
previous marathon. It's not about what I'm doing this time, but how
this time compares to what I did the last time. The objectivity of
training run distances and times has always attracted me to running,
but the ability to go back and see what I did last time is not really
helping me get ready for my next race. The cold clarity of the numbers
obscures the context in which those numbers, both present and future,
are produced. The question of whether I am doing all that I can to
prepare this time is muddled with how much running I did last time and
the impact that has with how I managed to perform on race day. I'm not
training for my next race. I'm retraining for a race I've already run.
The record I keep of how many times I've been intimate with my wife
reminds me of how things have changed in our life. Seeing trends go up
and being able to do more of what you enjoy is fantastic. It's easy to
read that as I must be doing everything right. It also makes it easy
to say that I must be doing things wrong when the numbers go down. The
numbers need to be seen in the proper context, but digits on a
spreadsheet don't say very much. They are clear about a very specific
event, but they say nothing about what was going on in every other
part of my life.
This rooted in the past orientation that I've been in for a couple of
years is really an issue of poor data interpretation. I hit a dip in a
few measures and started obsessing over the fact I hit a dip rather
than incorporating that trend into a broader time frame. I never dealt
with anxiety or similar feelings before that January, at least not to
the depth and duration that I hit in January 2020. I had always been
able to engage the problem and move beyond it. I wasn't able to do
that so much in January. I didn't solve my own problems so they kind
of lingered. I accepted the lessons and made some changes in how I
approached work, but the stress and anxiety stuck around. The world
didn't help, but I didn't really help myself either.
Bookshelf Zero keeps me pointed towards my past too. My books have
always been something that I enjoy having around. If I read them
great, if not, that's fine too. I made some choices to buy books in
the past, the choice to read that book was a choice for the future.
Bookshelf Zero makes reading all those books a sign of progress. A
year I read more books than I buy is successful while a year in which
I fail to achieve that goal is a failure. That's a 100% self-imposed
performance metric. Should I celebrate reading a book, no matter how
it came to me, or chide myself for reading a book that I just bought
or some book I got from the library rather than clicking another book
off my shelf? There are good reasons for both, but I feel like this is
also a question of data interpretation. It's the story I tell myself
about my reading habit that matters.
I feel like I've kind of built my own emotional prison (a bit
dramatic, but it was the first thing that came to mind). I put myself
here, I have the ability to get myself out. Let's start now. I saw
that a former colleague has a new title. He's in the space where I
used to toil. I felt a small pang that he was having that success that
I'm not, but then I had to ask myself why that matters. I made the
choice to leave that organization. I'm doing something new now. That's
what matters. I need to stop revisiting places where I used to do
things and put my energy on where I am now. I'm building a new life.
I'm sitting outside, by my pool, writing this entry at 11 pm on a
Monday night in December. In short sleeves. And it's super
comfortable. This is what matters now. The fact that Jim is a Team
Lead is great for him, irrelevant to me. I miss my old organization,
but that organization is dead. It's time to look ahead.
be honest, that should be when do I move beyond the past and start
living my life pointing toward the future rather than gazing into my
past. I was lying in bed this morning, my alarm having gone off, when
I felt a familiar clenching in my gut. My new friend anxiety coming to
pay a visit. Anxiety can't just come and hang out for no reason. There
must be something that I am dealing with in my life that is making me
anxious. I don't remember what issue I started to fixate on, but I
stopped and asked myself if the thoughts were causing the feelings of
anxiety or was the physical sensation that I have come to link with
anxiety making me find something to feel anxious about? I never really
had the physical sensations that I was experiencing before the bad
January of 2020, when I took a large load of work stress with me on a
trip to Disney World. I spent the entire trip in knots about a couple
of decisions that I had made. They were risky decisions that were not
panning out and I worked for a company that worked hard to protect
itself from risky decisions. The situations were resolved and my
reputation with some people was damaged. I thought that was a big deal
and those few weeks hounded me for months. They still do. The decay of
that impact is asymptotically slow. It lingers. It's why I had that
clenching in my guts this morning.
If emotions are just the labels we put on physical sensations, that
incident back in 2020 taught my system to treat a certain kind of
feeling as the anxiety that comes from regret about past actions and
the fear of what those actions may have on my future. I need to
reprogram that sensation and teach myself a new way to interpret those
sensations when they emerge. It's like my body got in the habit of
feeling that way for a few months and finds every opportunity to
recreate that experience. Disney World has been linked to that
episode. The complete release from reality that I used to experience
while on property has been replaced by this bracing for something bad.
Sitting on the porch at Riviera taking a call about what was going on
at PDI remains a vivid memory. It's like a part of me wants to go back
to that moment. I'm not in that moment, but I continue to experience
the fear and helplessness that I lived with during that entire trip
every time I step back on property. I will continue to relive that
bleak time until I fully confront that issue and put that period
behind me.
That's a very poignant and sharp instance of where a moment in the
past provides the lens through which to experience my present. That's
not the only one, even if it is the one that I dwell on the most. My
obsessive record keeping started as a way to track my progress. It
looked very future directed to me when I started, but the practice
roots me deeper into my past. I'm in a constant struggle with the
previous me. I'm not battling with my fear of The Edge or finding ways
to propel myself to new levels of performance or achievement. I'm
training for my next marathon in the context of my training for my
previous marathon. It's not about what I'm doing this time, but how
this time compares to what I did the last time. The objectivity of
training run distances and times has always attracted me to running,
but the ability to go back and see what I did last time is not really
helping me get ready for my next race. The cold clarity of the numbers
obscures the context in which those numbers, both present and future,
are produced. The question of whether I am doing all that I can to
prepare this time is muddled with how much running I did last time and
the impact that has with how I managed to perform on race day. I'm not
training for my next race. I'm retraining for a race I've already run.
The record I keep of how many times I've been intimate with my wife
reminds me of how things have changed in our life. Seeing trends go up
and being able to do more of what you enjoy is fantastic. It's easy to
read that as I must be doing everything right. It also makes it easy
to say that I must be doing things wrong when the numbers go down. The
numbers need to be seen in the proper context, but digits on a
spreadsheet don't say very much. They are clear about a very specific
event, but they say nothing about what was going on in every other
part of my life.
This rooted in the past orientation that I've been in for a couple of
years is really an issue of poor data interpretation. I hit a dip in a
few measures and started obsessing over the fact I hit a dip rather
than incorporating that trend into a broader time frame. I never dealt
with anxiety or similar feelings before that January, at least not to
the depth and duration that I hit in January 2020. I had always been
able to engage the problem and move beyond it. I wasn't able to do
that so much in January. I didn't solve my own problems so they kind
of lingered. I accepted the lessons and made some changes in how I
approached work, but the stress and anxiety stuck around. The world
didn't help, but I didn't really help myself either.
Bookshelf Zero keeps me pointed towards my past too. My books have
always been something that I enjoy having around. If I read them
great, if not, that's fine too. I made some choices to buy books in
the past, the choice to read that book was a choice for the future.
Bookshelf Zero makes reading all those books a sign of progress. A
year I read more books than I buy is successful while a year in which
I fail to achieve that goal is a failure. That's a 100% self-imposed
performance metric. Should I celebrate reading a book, no matter how
it came to me, or chide myself for reading a book that I just bought
or some book I got from the library rather than clicking another book
off my shelf? There are good reasons for both, but I feel like this is
also a question of data interpretation. It's the story I tell myself
about my reading habit that matters.
I feel like I've kind of built my own emotional prison (a bit
dramatic, but it was the first thing that came to mind). I put myself
here, I have the ability to get myself out. Let's start now. I saw
that a former colleague has a new title. He's in the space where I
used to toil. I felt a small pang that he was having that success that
I'm not, but then I had to ask myself why that matters. I made the
choice to leave that organization. I'm doing something new now. That's
what matters. I need to stop revisiting places where I used to do
things and put my energy on where I am now. I'm building a new life.
I'm sitting outside, by my pool, writing this entry at 11 pm on a
Monday night in December. In short sleeves. And it's super
comfortable. This is what matters now. The fact that Jim is a Team
Lead is great for him, irrelevant to me. I miss my old organization,
but that organization is dead. It's time to look ahead.
Sunday, October 17, 2021
Waiting it out
I realized that I've been waiting my life out for the last couple of years. I was a few miles into a long run, which is about 8 miles these days, when I realized that I've been getting through my runs, workouts, books, vacation, work days, you name it, for the last couple of years. I just want to get through whatever I'm in to get on to the next thing. Things will get back to normal eventually. I just need to keep going through the motions until that moment finally gets here. But will that moment ever actually arrive? I look back at my numerous records and see the disparity of where my life was in 2015 with where it is now. The numbers tell me things were clicking much better back then. Longer, faster runs, more reading, a better sex life. I try to think of what was different then to what I've been living through for the last couple of years. In retrospect, that period around 2015 looks like the perfect balance of the different parts of my life. My kids were old enough that they were more independent but not obnoxious teenagers. My work life presented the perfect balance of challenge and opportunity, with security and promising prospects. I was motivated to work out and had a nice injury free streak that gave me the fitness to really extend my running.
What changed between now and that blissful period where all the pieces were falling into place? Professionally, I had a series of bad luck setbacks. My sense that I would always be able to resolve a situation had been shaken. A bad partner company, some bad communication, a couple of bad decisions. My reputation took a hit. That set me back big time. I had to fight to get back from that. I let it get to that point. I don't know how much of it was in my head and how much was real. Organizational change introduced its own chaos into the situation. Of course this was all going on in the context of the world losing its mind over a respiratory virus. Navigating a new world was an inflection point in life kind of challenge. It's not going away anytime soon. My life really did become just make it to the next day during the worst of it. And when I say the worst I'm talking about the response. What choice was there but to just wait for things to improve? Let's not forget that I was also in a new role with an incomptent manager and the worst employee that I have ever seen. That role was hard enough without trying to build a team while working remotely in a group that was new to my part of the organization. This is the opposite of what I was living professionally in 2015.
My kids have grown up. They are teenagers with opinions and thoughts all their own now. They succeed and fail and I'm just a spectator. They take up more space. My wife twisted her ankle. I noted it in my I Done This record. September 26, 2015. That was the first in a series of physical challenges that fundamentally changed the nature of our relationship. She's never really recovered from that injury. She managed to run the ultra she was training for when she twisted her ankle, but she's hasn't regained the focus and commitment that she had before she twisted her ankle. She has had plenty of other challenges to contend with over the last 5 or 6 years too. Our lives were pretty simple in 2015. They got really complicated over the ensuing years. They were complicated before we had to deal with virus insanity, her parents passing away (and the struggle to figure out what to do in the few months prior to that terrible time), but things have only gotten worse since then.
I was able to embrace the pain and discomfort of being in the middle of a long run rather than just waiting for it to end yesterday so there must be some hope that I'm emerging into a better space. I'm in the middle of one of the biggest challenges of my life, living away from my family, but I feel less encumbered by so much of the complexity that was suffocating me last year. Leaving the organizational stuff behind was part of it, but it's more complicated than that. I don't feel depressed anymore. I'm sure there are multiple factors for that change. I won't delve into them here. I feel more like myself. I want this separation from my family to end (like right now), but I know I can make it to the other side of this period. I have the emotional energy to deal with challenging situations. I was exhausted last week, but I managed to push through that barrier and engage with my work. I moved when I would have been idle last year. My professional challenges are just as big as last year, but they don't feel as unwieldy. I wanted to go into the difference between 6 years ago and now to get myself to acknowledge that I have not failed in some way because I don't work out as much or my life looks different. My life has evolved well beyond my 2015 life. I may have resisted that change, but it's happening. Everyday.
Monday, August 2, 2021
Projects
Things I need to make sure I do while I'm solo in Florida:
1. Get established in my new role.
2. Be the best husband/dad I can be while being away from my family for weeks at a time
3. Find a house
4. Train for the Disney Marathon
5. Read books I own
That's a rough plan. I want to have a direction and a plan. Sitting around trying to figure out what to do every night is not going to be a successful way to live.
Saturday, January 2, 2021
I just don't want to
I miss my workout volume goals, skip reading Dickens, avoid the hard books on my shelves, and make poor eating choices because I don't want to do things that are hard. Reading Dickens is hard. It requires effort and a bit of exertion. Dragging myself out of bed at 5 and getting out for a run when it's cold and dark sucks. Not just a little, it sucks big time. Sitting in the warm bathroom scrolling on my phone is pleasant. It's comfortable. It's easy. I want to realize the benefits of getting in my run, but overcoming easy inertia takes effort. Deciphering the convoluted sentences of The Golden Bowl takes focus. Mustering the mental energy to take on that challenge at the end of the day is a very non-trivial exertion. Lying in my bed and reading a thriller is a fun diversion. Why would I want to take on the effort (and occasional aggravation) of Henry James when I can just scroll through Twitter for a half hour? I would rather play Tetris then dig into a Jefferson bio. I just don't want to do the hard stuff.
Here is where I should reference some study on how immediate needs are prioritized over decisions that have long term benefits. My plight is just a specific example of a quirk in the human machine. Blah, I'm so over that genre of self-improvement. Just acknowledge that things suck and commit to getting it done anyway. I read a few pages of The Golden Bowl before taking on some more pleasant activities. I'm writing this before playing Tetris. I talked myself out of buying two books on the Kindle Daily Deal. There are not epic battles of will. They are just slight shifts in how I think about what I'm doing. Sure, I may not want to do it right now, but I can usually talk myself into doing what needs to get done after acknowledging that it may not be fun or exactly what I want to do in the moment. I will be open to small progress. Five pages of James are better than zero. Be patient. Those obnoxiously complex sentences will get easier to read as I find the flow and get into the groove of the language. It may be hard now, but it will get easier over time.
No big plans or strategies are needed. Just acknowledge that I'm avoiding doing something that is hard, acknowledge the truth of this, and do it anyway.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)